Linguistic competence

The term linguistic competence refers to the unconscious knowledge of grammarthat

allows a speaker to use and understand a language. Also known as grammatical
competence or I-language. Contrast with linguistic performance.

As used by Noam Chomsky and other linguists, linguistic competence is not an evaluative
term. Rather, it refers to the innate linguistic knowledge that allows a person to match
sounds and meanings.

In Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1965), Chomsky wrote, "We thus make a fundamental
distinction between competence (the speaker-hearer's knowledge of his language)
and performance (the actual use of language in concrete situations)."

EXAMPLES AND OBSERVATIONS

"Linguistic competence constitutes knowledge of language, but that knowledge is tacit,

implicit. This means that people do not have conscious access to the principles and rules
that govern the combination of sounds, words, and sentences; however, they do recognize
when those rules and principles have been violated. . . . For example, when a person judges
that the sentence John said that Jane helped himself is ungrammatical, it is because the
person has tacit knowledge of the grammatical principle that reflexive pronouns must refer
to an NP in the same clause." (Eva M. Fernandez and Helen Smith Cairns, Fundamentals
of Psycholinguistics.Wiley-Blackwell, 2011)
LINGUISTIC COMPETENCE AND LINGUISTIC PERFORMANCE

"In [Noam] Chomsky's theory, our linguistic competence is our unconscious knowledge
of languages and is similar in some ways to [Ferdinand de] Saussure's concept of langue,
the organizing principles of a language. What we actually produce as utterances is similar
to Saussure's parole, and is called linguistic performance.

The difference between linguistic competence and linguistic performance can be illustrated
by slips of the tongue, such as 'noble tons of soil' for 'noble sons of toil.' Uttering such a slip
doesn't mean that we don't know English but rather that we've simply made a mistake
because we were tired, distracted, or whatever. Such 'errors' also aren't evidence that you
are (assuming you are a native speaker) a poor English speaker or that you don't know
English as well as someone else does. It means that linguistic performance is different from
linguistic competence. When we say that someone is a better speaker than someone else
(Martin Luther King, Jr., for example, was a terrific orator, much better than you might
be), these judgements tell us about performance, not competence. Native speakers of a
language, whether they are famous public speakers or not, don't know the language any
better than any other speaker in terms of linguistic competence." (Kristin Denham and
Anne Lobeck, Linguistics for Everyone. Wadsworth, 2010)

"Two language users may have the same 'program' for carrying out specific tasks of
production and recognition, but differ in their ability to apply it because of exogenous
differences (such as short-term memory capacity).

The two are accordingly equally language-competent but not necessarily equally adept at
making use of their competence.
"The linguistic competence of a human being should accordingly be identified with that
individual's internalized 'program' for production and recognition. While many linguists
would identify the study of this program with the study of performance rather than
competence, it should be clear that this identification is mistaken since we have
deliberately abstracted away from any consideration of what happens when a language
user actually attempts to put the program to use. A major goal of the psychology of
language is to construct a viable hypothesis as to the structure of this program . . .."
(Michael B. Kac, Grammars and Grammaticality. John Benjamins, 1992)

Communicative Competence Definition and Examples

The term communicative competence refers to both the tacit knowledge of a language and
the ability to use it effectively. Also called communication competence.

The concept of communicative competence (a term coined by linguist Dell Hymes in 1972)
grew out of resistance to the concept of linguistic competence introduced by Noam
Chomsky (1965). Most scholars now consider linguistic competence to be a part
of communicative competence.

EXAMPLES AND OBSERVATIONS

"Why have so many scholars, from so many fields, studied communicative

competence within so many relational, institutional, and cultural contexts? Our
hunch is that scholars, as well as the contemporary Western societies in which most
live and work, widely accept the following tacit beliefs: (a) within any situation, not
all things that can be said and done are equally competent; (b) success in personal
and professional relationships depends, in no small part, on communicative
competence; and (c) most people display incompetence in at least a few situations,
and a smaller number are judged incompetent across many situations."
(Steven Wilson and Christina Sabee, 2003, quoted by Gert Rickheit et al. in "The
Concept of Communicative Competence." Handbook Of Communication
Competence, ed. by G. Rickheit and H. Strohner. Walter de Gruyter, 2010)
"By far the most important development in TESOL has been the emphasis on a
communicative approach in language teaching (Coste, 1976; Roulet, 1972;
Widdowson, 1978). The one thing that everyone is certain about is the necessity to
use language for communicative purposes in the classroom. Consequently, the
concern for teaching linguistic competence has widened to include communicative
competence, the socially appropriate use of language, and the methods reflect this
shift from form to function."
(Christina Bratt Paulston, "Introduction: English Teaching as a Foreign or Second
Language." Linguistic and Communicative Competence. Multilingual Matters, 1992)

HYMES ON COMPETENCE

"We have then to account for the fact that a normal child acquires knowledge of sentences
not only as grammatical, but also as appropriate. He or she acquires competence as to
when to speak, when not, and as to what to talk about with whom, when, where, in what
manner. In short, a child becomes able to accomplish a repertoire of speech acts, to take
part in speech events, and to evaluate their accomplishment by others.
This competence, moreover, is integral with attitudes, values, and motivations concerning
language, its features and uses, and integral with competence for, and attitudes toward, the
interrelation of language with the other code of communicative conduct." (Dell Hymes,
"Models of the Interaction of Language and Social Life," in Directions in Sociolinguistics:
The Ethnography of Communication, ed. by J. J. Gumperz and D. Hymes. Holt, Rinehart
& Winston, 1972)

CANALE AND SWAIN'S MODEL OF COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE

In "Theoretical Bases of Communicative Approaches to Second Language Teaching and Testing"

(Applied Linguistics, 1980), Michael Canale and Merrill Swain identified these four components of
communicative competence:

(i) Grammatical competence includes knowledge of phonology, orthography, vocabulary, word formation
and sentence formation.
(ii) Sociolinguistic competence includes knowledge of sociocultural rules of use. It is concerned with the
learners' ability to handle for example settings, topics and communicative functions in different
sociolinguistic contexts. In addition, it deals with the use of appropriate grammatical forms for different
communicative functions in different sociolinguistic contexts.
(iii) Discourse competence is related to the learners' mastery of understanding and producing texts in the
modes of listening, speaking, reading and writing. It deals with cohesion and coherence in different types of
texts.
(iv) Strategic competence refers to compensatory strategies in case of grammatical or sociolinguistic or
discourse difficulties, such as the use of reference sources, grammatical and lexical paraphrase, requests for
repetition, clarification, slower speech, or problems in addressing strangers when unsure of their social
status or in finding the right cohesion devices. It is also concerned with such performance factors as coping
with the nuisance of background noise or using gap fillers.
(Reinhold Peterwagner, What Is the Matter With Communicative Competence?: An Analysis to Encourage
Teachers of English to Assess the Very Basis of Their Teaching. Lit Verlag, 2005)

pragmatic competence
DEFINITION

In linguistics, pragmatic competence is the ability to use language effectively in

a contextually appropriate fashion. Pragmatic competence is a fundamental aspect of a
more general communicative competence.

In Acquisition in Interlanguage Pragmatics (2003), linguist Anne Barron offers this more
expansive definition: "pragmatic competence . . . is understood as the knowledge of the
linguistic resources available in a given language for realizing particular illocutions,
knowledge of the sequential aspects of speech acts, and finally, knowledge of the
appropriate contextual use of the particular language's linguistic resources."

The term pragmatic competence was introduced by sociolinguist Jenny Thomas in 1983 in
the article "Cross-Cultural Pragmatic Failure" (Applied Linguistics). In that article she
defined pragmatic competence as "the ability to use language effectively in order to
achieve a specific purpose and to understand language in context."